07/01/2026
235,919 EGC for June with this load today, for our crew, team WBS.
The population is obviously growing and there are millions in the Bay now. The commercial clam diggers are seeing them on the spits now. Seeing these huge numbers will lead many of you to believe it's too late to stop them. You might be right, but I still have hope, and here's why.
The reason we, my crew, are getting such large numbers is that unlike most, or all of the other trappers in the Bay that are trapping certain locations continually, we are consonantly prospecting, looking for large concentrations of crab. We are always looking, prospecting, and when we find heavy concentrations we move our gear to that spot and grind on it. We are always moving our gear around to the best spots we can find. Just like commercial crabbers do.
We have for 4 years caught more EGC than anybody else. We have gotten very, very good at it, paying attention to the nuances of tuning the gear, finding the crab, knowing what tides are best in what areas, how to get the best soak out of our bait, and so on. My crew are the best Green Crab fishermen in the State. That's not a brag, it's a fact! And we're trying to catch as many as possible!
There are more people trapping now, and they are all using better gear and are building on the knowledge we are collectively gathering. Everybody that is putting out a serious trapping effort is getting more crab than before. WDFW has been more responsive and helpful lately. I really feel we're starting to gain some momentum finally.
The Hope!
The Port was where we started trapping over 4 years ago, and was always the worst infestation of EGC we knew of. It was where we always got the most EGC in our traps. This spring we found out that the gravid females were hiding in pipes under seed bags, and didn't come to baited traps. We harvested over 7,000 gravid females in 10 days out of those pipes! More than we trap with bait in a whole year.
2 days ago we caught 19,986 EGC in a single day from 4 different locations. One of those locations was the Port, and we only caught 181 EGC at the Port. Less than 1% of our catch was from what used to be the worst spot we could find. Now we have 8 traps there to monitor it and keep the new comers trapped out. I believe the Port proves you can beat the EGC back to manageable numbers with enough effort.
Can we get enough effort to stop their expansion Bay wide? There,s only one way to know, and that's to try. There's too much at stake not to give it everything we can. It's not just clams and oysters that will go away. It's dungeness crab, razor clams, and pretty much everything else that lives in these waters. Willapa Bay is turning into the biggest nursery for EGC on the coast, to pump larvae into the ocean to infest the whole West Coast. All the EGC that have been caught by us and everybody else that's trapping has at the very least slowed the process down, and left us with some hope.
So as long as there's still hope, and I'm still able, we're going to keep at it the best we know how.
Thanks for your support.
